How to model multiple lines along random paths
I have seen your question and I would recommend 2 things.
You could use the particle system, go to particle edit and add also sorts of funky hairstyles to your bacterium over there, but I will tell you this if you try this method, you're gonna have a bad time. Sorry for adding the little undertale pun but seriously though, you will find it troublesome. It always causes some problem that makes the Bacteria look like some sort of a hybrid of a monster, a virus, and a bug instead of giving him a funky hairstyle as you want. I will recommend the next method, Use the grease pencil. Yeah, the grease pencil is perfect for this stuff as it gives you way more customizability compared to blender's particle system, and animating this sort of hair is also easy in case your bacterium is part of an animation. You just animate the grease pencil. Now if you want it as a mesh, you can turn the grease pencil drawings into a mesh like this. Make sure you are in Object mode. Now select your drawing/whatever you've drawn with the grease pencil, right-click, and select Convert to mesh. For some reason, it turns it into a curve but no worries, you can just right-click and select Convert to mesh, problem solved. But you would be just fine if you grease pencil most of the time. Converting it to a mesh can also cause errors so mostly going with Grease pencil won't cause problems and no one would really know. Hope it helps, if you have any problems, please comment.